Demon Hunt (20 page)

“
God - the
one
night I don’t have my camera in the truck!” Pam exclaimed, still holding tightly to her gun.

Rhi started to babble but the sight of Blackthorne floating up into the air to stand in the crown of a tree near the road made her stop. He scanned the area from his perch for the offending magical reptile.

“
He can fly, Pam. He’s floating for you. Now if he would glow a little.”

Pam didn’t bother to appear startled. “He’s a good vampire - of course he can fly. He danced on the ceiling earlier with his brother - why are you surprised? I wonder if he’s like a fairy?”

Houston wore an expression of wonder on his face. “Fairy?”

“
Yeah. Can we hold him upside down and sprinkle his dust on us and we can fly too? That would be
so
cool.”

A dragon is swooping around town and Pam wants some fairy dust,
Rhi thought.
I wonder where I can get a bottle of tequila at this time of the night? I think I’m out.
She addressed her friend. “Do you think we can turn a guy who weighs a solid 210 upside down and sprinkle him on someone?”

Blackthorne landed beside her. Hearing her words, he looked baffled. “Sprinkle? Never mind - I don’t want to know. It’s gone to hide in whatever cave or mine shaft Manius has found for the thing. My brother is trying to freak you out, Rhi.”

“
He’s succeeding. Where’d he get a dragon?”

Blackthorne shrugged. “He raised it from one of the planes of Hell, I’m sure. The ones in this dimension don’t like to show themselves to modern man - too many weapons can kill them easier now than in the old days. They sleep the eons away in a cave on top of their treasure. And besides, it didn’t look like a
good
dragon. Damn it! The evil ones are the hardest to control. The only good part of this is that Manius might not have meant for us to see it. Let’s get to your homes - now.”

“
Good dragons?” Pam called as he led Rhi back to the truck. “There are good ones? Can I get one?”

“
Does anything intimidate her?” he muttered under his breath.

“
No. When she dies her headstone will read:
She had a damned good time.
How many people will be able to say the same thing? Can you?”

He didn’t reply – instead he just reached to help her into a running vehicle for the third time that night.

The caravan headed out once more, this time with Blackthorne and Houston driving. Pam hung out the opened passenger side window, trying to get another glimpse of the dragon. Rhi had enough of being tough for the evening. She didn’t want to crawl into Blackthorne’s arms and cry - she wanted to curl up in a fetal position and suck her thumb. He could fly. Before the dragon, she could cling to the hope that the events of the evening and the past few days were a hallucination brought on by the residual effects of altitude and second-hand smoke. That explanation was gone. She was stone cold sober and he could fly.

The road to Horse Thief Gulch stretched too far and Rhi glimpsed so many shadows in the air and in the skeletal winter woods her hands shook again. Finally, in self defense, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“
Tired?”

She snorted and pulled the hood of her coat over her head. “Tired? No. Losing my grip on my sanity? Hell yeah.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Chief Boyd stood on the edge of a clearing off of Four Mile Road, his hand on his gun even though he was surrounded by three fourths of the Cripple Creek Police Force, all available state troopers, the fire department and every EMT who could be gathered up on short notice.

The smell of fire, gasoline, and unspeakable burnt meat permeated the air and gagged him. He controlled the urge to add to the chaos by throwing up and mentally girded himself to look around. The chief stood in the middle of a battlefield or a terrible accident and until he knew which one it was, he was keeping one hand on his gun. Of course it was connected to
her.
That
much he was sure of. His gun might be useless.

Four-wheel-drives, bits of snowmobiles and body parts littered the area, pieces of each even hanging in the snow filled evergreens in a bizarre parody of holiday decorations. A crater the size of a Mac truck dominated the remains of a bonfire party. Snowmobile tracks crisscrossed the site. He pointed his flashlight down, revealing the broken top of a bottle of whiskey lying at his feet. One of his younger deputies approached the chief, carefully stepping around patches of something the chief made a point of not looking at too closely. The kid couldn’t have looked more shell shocked if he were on cleanup duty on the beaches of Normandy after D-Day.

“
Sir, it looks like they got a hold of some dynamite - maybe some of the old, unstable stuff people find sometimes cached on some of the smaller old claims.”

The chief shook his head in disbelief. Damage control would be a bastard on this one. “They would have had to have found a crate of the stuff to make a hole this big. Did someone dump it on the fire thinking it would act like fireworks? Stupid rednecks. The stuff would be sweating nitro if it were really old. It should have blown up when they carried it here. And what about the wreck on the trail?” He didn’t want to think about what really had happened and no one would believe him anyway. How could he protect his town from something no one would believe and he can’t explain anyway?

The deputy tried to answer over his gag reflex. “There’s blood, sir, but no bodies. It’s going to take forever to sort everyone out and account for everybody. The footprints are a mess. Half covered with snow already and it’s started snowing again. We have a team coming up from Colorado Springs to help out.”

Boyd strode over to examine the ruins of Melon’s Scout. “I know this one - the brain dead kid from the gym - Melon. Let’s find out what happened here, guys. First, there’s the Alien Club mess downtown, which no one can seem to remember much of. And we can’t find the gun that went off in the middle of a restaurant. Now this.”

This was all too familiar. The fireside tales of his grandfather danced through his head for days as he made his preparations. How could any of this insanity have happened before and then the tale just be forgotten? He filed these thoughts in the back of his mind for later. The police chief of Cripple Creek climbed into his warm truck to make a call. She told him she would try to keep it from escalating … if this was her version of damage control, God help them. It had turned into a hell of a night in the Centennial State.

* * * *

Manius stalked from one end of his oversized living room to the other, holding an ice pack over one eye. Just because he was immortal didn’t mean he couldn’t be pounded into chopped steak. It took him less time to heal than a mortal but it still hurt.

His brother’s loss of control wasn’t a bother. It amused him to rattle his brother - the presence of Rhi took all of Jack’s reason. But the mess at the scene of the massacre of the snow mobile party put the lord of the castle in a fury. According to the police channels he monitored on the ride home, there were bodies in the woods that hadn’t been turned into chunks of flesh and charcoal like the rest of the victims.

Several small, nervous-looking demons hovered near the blazing hearth. One of them squeaked in terror as Manius approached them. The broken blood vessels in the vampire’s eye were overwhelmed by his glowing fury. “You were supposed to have the Great Beast burn all of the meat, my friends! The food must not look
chewed.
You’d been fed - do you want to be seen enough for someone to realize that you are real? Their disbelief is our weapon! You left some of the dead you fed on in the woods!”

“
We hungry - save for later,” the leader spat out, drops of spittle falling from his bulbous lips to the parquet floor to sizzle on the tile. “Dragon cover most of mess - burnt food no good. There plenty fresh food there …”

Manius resisted the urge to blast them all back to Hell, which would then entail him spending more power he did not have to spare to raise more demons. And he would have to go out into the middle of the woods to do it. He changed tack. “Well, you’ll have to eat the food that I bring you for a while. When I have the power of the skull, there will be plenty of food for all who are loyal to me, little one.”

He petted the first one on its’ bald scalp, running his hands over the points of the ears. “And those who are not loyal to me - or half-ass a direct order…” he picked up the demon he had been petting and tossed it into the fireplace. The flames burned higher for a moment as the demon sat directly in the fire, looking confused. Manius waved a hand at the creature and it popped like a giant kernel of popcorn, disappearing in a puff of smelly smoke. The others skittered away. Making an example of one was a better use of his resources.

“
Troy!” he barked.

His assistant stepped up to his master, ignoring the fleeing demons.

“
Yes sir?”

“
Go fetch some air freshener for this room - it stinks. Maybe some fresh breeze scent,” Manius ordered and left for the comfort of his suite. He strode down the thick carpets covering the floors of the hall, still clutching his ice pack. His head was killing him - not only from the fight but also the effort to control the demons.

Controlling the Dragon was taking its toll on him as well. The effort it took to force the huge spirit of the night to return to the old mining shaft Manius picked out to hide it in almost made him black out. The life forces he had bloated himself with at the massacre were precious. He didn’t mind a mass murder here and there or a jaunt in the night air for the creatures, but he had given his servants strict instructions to cover up the mess they left. The demons could appear to only the few who wouldn’t be believed.

He thought earlier about sending the Dragon to turn loop de loops over Rhi’s house before he had become so exhausted. But there was no use in rubbing it in. The recent events he created would feed upon themselves and generate plenty of fear in town. He’d have ample time to repay his brother and terrify the girl later. Everything would be perfect this turn. Now, he needed a hot bath and maybe a sitcom rerun to calm him down.

There were enough spies watching the town and the girl. He would know the moment she touched the skull. There was no use in getting worked up about it. Jack was worked up enough for all of them.

Manius took off his clothes and folded them before laying them on an embroidered armchair. He dressed himself in his silk pajamas and a new smoking jacket he picked up in Denver. The shopping had improved in the city since the 1800’s.

It was time to toy with the light snack Troy brought up from the cellar earlier, even though he wasn’t hungry. He opened the door to his bathroom and admired the teenaged girl, hogtied and gagged, lying in the middle of the tiled floor. Her fishnet stockings were ripped in several places - the little black silk bustier that barely covered her small breasts was torn open. Troy had been amusing himself. The little hookers from Denver were so plentiful and cheap Manius couldn’t resist bringing several up at a time to reside in the cells hidden behind his wine cellar. Troy kept them half drugged and went down to play with them sometimes. Cripple Creek was so small; the disappearance of a girl every other day would have been a problem in the last few weeks. But soon it wouldn’t matter.

Manius had snacked on this one before … her acne-scarred face, filled with terror, showed that she was well aware of what he needed from her. He sat beside her and took her head in his lap, crooning, calming her, slowing her blood. The girl had shiny, long black hair and Manius placed a mental picture of Rhi over her face as he leaned over to lick her breasts. His tongue had taken on some aspects of his demon contamination and was as rough as 12 grit sandpaper. Blood ran from the raw patch of skin he created on her chest. The girl’s whimpers of terror he heard in his mind as Rhi’s husky tones. His eyes burned with red light. He would play with her soon.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The hills surrounding Rhi’s home loomed, sleeping giants against the night.

Rhi leaned back in her seat and turned her head to stare.

“
What?”

“
Nothing.”

Dead guy. Driving her truck. Hot dead guy driving her truck. Hot dead guy driving her truck who she married in a past life. The added element of being the world’s great hope in a climatic battle between good and evil made her head ache. A stiff dose of raw cookie dough with whipped cream was in order.

“
Does your heart beat?” she asked.

“
Of course my heart beats,” Blackthorne replied.

Rhi straightened. “But I thought you were a vampire?”

“
There are a variety of vampiric creatures in the world, Rhi,” he told her in a brusque tone.

“
And which category do you fit into?”

“
The good category.”

“
Sez you.”